Books like 'The Right Sort'
Readers who enjoyed The Right Sort by David Mitchell also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary fantasy horror gothic magical-realism literary-fiction low-fantasy
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The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsTHE PURLOINED LETTER THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE OF SCHEHERAZADE A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTRÖM. VON KEMPELEN AND HIS DISCOVERY MESMERIC REVELATION THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR THE BLACK CAT. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER SILENCE—A FABLE THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH. THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO... -
Hades by Mark Z. Danielewski
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWhen a viral video puts twelve-year-old Xanther under a spotlight of scrutiny at school, her little white cat—still slumbering, still unnamed—offers the only escape, though it comes at a price. Not even Xanther’ parents can deny the strange currents now shuddering around their eldest, touching off inexplicable happenings. Entities troubling the dreams of the twins seem to have singled out Freya... -
End of the Game and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsEnd of the game is one of the most important collections of stories of the second half of the 20th century. Engaged in transgressing the laws of conventional narrative, in these eighteen stories Julio Cortázar combines intertextuality, an unpublished use of the colloquial and endless game to bring the reader into a particular universe where nothing is what it seems... -
The Witchstone by Henry H. Neff
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAn unforgettable, high-stakes, laugh-out-loud funny novel, The Witchstone blends the merciless humor of The Good Place with the spellbinding fantasy of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.Meet Laszlo, eight-hundred-year-old demon and Hell’s least productive Curse Keeper. From his office beneath Midtown, he oversees the Drakeford Curse, which involves a pathetic family upstate and a mysterious black stone... -
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Bestiary: The Selected Stories of Julio Cortázar by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsA collection of masterful short stories in Julio Cortazar's sophistocated, powerful and gripping style.A grieving family home becomes the site of a terrifying invasion. A frustrated love triangle, brought together by a plundered Aztec idol, spills over into brutality. A lodger’s inability to stop vomiting bunny rabbits inspires a personal confession...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies classics contemporary -
Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsOne of our most imaginative and accomplished writers, Angela Carter left behind a dazzling array of work: essays, citicism, and fiction. But it is in her short stories that her extraordinary talents—as a fabulist, feminist, social critic, and weaver of tales—are most penetratingly evident...Categorized as:
gothic literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies classics contemporary -
Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn Gabino Iglesias’ second novel, ghosts and old gods guide the hands of those caught up in a violent struggle to save the soul of the American southwest.A man tasked with shuttling children over the border believes the Virgin Mary is guiding him towards final justice. A woman offers colonizer blood to the Mother of Chaos... -
Summer Morning, Summer Night by Ray Bradbury
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsGreen Town, Illinois stands at the very heart of Ray Bradbury Country. A lovingly re-imagined version of the author's native Waukegan, it has served as the setting for such modern classics as Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Farewell Summer...Categorized as:
low-fantasy magical-realism anthologies classics contemporary fiction historical-fiction horror -
Fruiting Bodies: Stories by Kathryn Harlan
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn stories that beckon and haunt, Fruiting Bodies ranges confidently from the fantastical to the gothic to the uncanny as it follows characters—mostly queer, mostly women—on the precipice of change. Echoes of timeless myth and folklore reverberate through urgent narratives of discovery, appetite, and coming-of-age in a time of crisis... -
The Buying of Lot 37 by Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor
Rated: 4.47 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFrom the authors of the New York Times bestselling novels It Devours! and Welcome to Night Vale and the creators of the #1 international podcast of the same name, comes a collection of episodes from Season Three of their hit podcast, featuring an introduction by the authors, a foreword by Dessa, behind-the-scenes commentary, and original illustrations...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism action-adventure adult book comedy contemporary -
Redwood by Mark Z. Danielewski
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe Season One finale of this riveting multisensory masterpiece from the visionary author of House of Leaves...Categorized as:
magical-realism literary-fiction low-fantasy fiction fantasy horror mystery contemporary -
Flames by Robbie Arnott
Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsA young man named Levi McAllister decides to build a coffin for his twenty-three-year-old sister, Charlotte—who promptly runs for her life. A water rat swims upriver in quest of the cloud god. A fisherman named Karl hunts for tuna in partnership with a seal. And a father takes form from fire...Categorized as:
gothic literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 21st-century adult animals anthologies -
Selected Poems & Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, Neil Gaiman
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFor more than a century-and-a-half, Edgar Allan Poe's poems and tales have thrilled readers with chilling accounts of matters mysterious and macabre... -
Sredni Vashtar and Other Stories by Saki
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsBorn in Burma in 1870, Scottish writer H.H. Munro (his pseudonym is from FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam) satirized the social conventions, cruelty and foolishness of the Edwardian era with a highly readable blend of flippant humor and outrageous inventiveness, often overlaid with a mood of horror... -
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Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsCursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung. Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society...Categorized as:
gothic literary-fiction magical-realism 21st-century adult anthologies contemporary dark -
The Bone Fire by György Dragomán
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFrom an award-winning European writer, a Gothic page-turner with all the menace and promise of a fairy tale In the aftermath of a revolution that has plunged her country into chaos, thirteen-year-old Emma’s small corner of the world is shattered after her dissident parents' death in a car crash...Categorized as:
gothic literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism action-adventure adult book coming-of-age -
Peace by Gene Wolfe
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsMesmerizing sci-fi from the author the Denver Post calls "one of the literary giants of science fiction." The melancholy memoir of Alden Dennis Weer, an embittered old man living in a small midwestern town, reveals a miraculous dimension. For Weer's imagination has the power to obliterate time and reshape reality, transcending even death itself...Categorized as:
gothic literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
Colorful by Eto Mori
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA beloved and bestselling classic in Japan, this groundbreaking tale of a dead soul who gets a second chance is now available in English for the very first time."Congratulations, you've won the lottery!" shouts the angel Prapura to a formless soul. The soul hasn't been kicked out of the cycle of rebirth just yet—he's been given a second chance...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 20th-century anthologies asian-mc audiobook classics -
The Threads of the Heart by Carole Martinez
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThey say Frasquita knows magic, that she is a healer with occult powers, that perhaps she is a sorcerer. She does indeed possess a remarkable gift, one that has been passed down to the women in her family for generations...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 21st-century adult book contemporary family -
The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories by Jamil Jan Kochai
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA luminous meditation on sons and fathers, ghosts of war, and living history that moves between modern-day Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora...Categorized as:
magical-realism literary-fiction fiction horror war contemporary audiobook anthologies -
The Wonder State by Sara Flannery Murphy
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFrom the author of Girl One comes a spellbinding adventure about a strange power lurking in the Arkansas Ozarks, and the group of friends obsessed with finding it.Five friends arrive back in Eternal Springs, Arkansas, the small town they all fled after high school graduation. Each is drawn home by a cryptic, scrawled two-word letter that reads, You promised... -
Catastrophe: And Other Stories by Dino Buzzati
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn Catastrophe, the renowned Italian short story writer Dino Buzzati brings vividly to life the slow and quietly terrifying collapse of our known, everyday world. In stories touched by the fantastical and the strange, and filled with humor, irony, and menace, Buzzati illuminates the nightmarish side of our ordinary existence...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies classics contemporary -
Blinding by Mircea Cărtărescu
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsPart visceral dream-memoir, part fictive journey through a hallucinatory Bucharest, Mircea Cărtărescu's BLINDING was one of the most widely heralded literary sensations in contemporary Romania, and a bestseller from the day of its release...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 20th-century adult book contemporary family -
The Empire of Ice Cream by Jeffrey Ford
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsMixing the mundane with the metaphysical, the pairings of the everyday and the extraordinary in this collection of short fiction yield supernatural results—a young musician perceives another world while drinking coffee, a fairy chronicles his busy life in a sandcastle during the changing tide, a demonic 16th-century chess set shows up in a New Jersey bar, and Charon, the boatman of hell, takes a... -
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In the Penny Arcade by Steven Millhauser
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe seven stories of In the Penny Arcade blend both the real and the fantastic in a seductive mix that illuminates the full range of Steven Millhauser's gifts, from 'August Eschenburg', the story of a clockmaker's son whose extraordinary talent for creating animated figures is lost on a world whose taste for the perverse and crude supersedes that of the refined and beautiful, to 'Cathay', a...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction -
All the Names They Used for God by Anjali Sachdeva
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsA haunting, diverse debut story collection that explores the isolation we experience in the face of the mysterious, often dangerous forces that shape our livesAnjali Sachdeva's debut collection spans centuries, continents, and a diverse set of characters but is united by each character's epic struggle with fate: A workman in Andrew Carnegie's steel mills is irrevocably changed by the brutal...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 21st-century adult anthologies audiobook contemporary -
American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940's Until Now by Peter Straub, John Collier
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsLike its companion volume, this Library of America hardcover contains 750 pages of classic tales of horror, hauntings, terrifying obsessions, and unearthly presences...Categorized as:
gothic literary-fiction magical-realism adult anthologies classics contemporary female-author -
Girl Like a Bomb by Autumn Christian
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAutumn Christian's third novel is a dark journey of self-discovery. An existential labyrinth of love, sex, and self-actualization where the only way out is through. When high schooler Beverly Sykes finally has sex, her whole life changes. She feels an explosion inside of her that feels like her DNA is being rearranged, and she discovers a strange power within...Categorized as:
literary-fiction magical-realism adult audiobook book contemporary female-author female-mc -
Idle Hands by Cassondra Windwalker
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsYou can call me Ella. You generally assign me a whole host of other preposterous monikers. I think the least imaginative name I’ve heard is “the devil”, but I’ll answer to it if I must. After making the courageous decision to leave her abusive husband, Perdie and her three young children start over and finally find the safety and love they deserve... -
Verdigris by Michele Mari
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAt the tail end of the 1960s, the thirteen-year-old Michelino spends his summers at his grandparents’ modest estate in Nasca, near Lake Maggiore, losing himself in the tales of horror, adventure, and mystery shelved in his grandfather’s library... -
Fallen Thorns by Harvey Oliver Baxter
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratings‘A great death is in the air.’Arlo is lost. He thought he had everything figured out. Go to university, fall in love, get a job.But life doesn’t always work like that, and before he has a chance to figure it out, he dies.In the space of a night, Arlo is plunged into a world of blood and immortality and finds a group of people who swear to always have his back... -
Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrom the Pulitzer Finalist and universally beloved author of the New York Times best sellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove, a stunning new collection of short fiction that showcases Karen Russell's extraordinary, irresistible gifts of language and imagination...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism adult anthologies audiobook contemporary dystopia -
Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom by Sylvia Plath
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFaber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles.Lips the colour of blood, the sun an unprecedented orange, train wheels that sound like 'guilt, and guilt, and guilt': these are just some of the things Mary Ventura begins to notice on her journey to the ninth kingdom...Categorized as:
gothic literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook -
The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories by Bruno Schulz, Jonathan Safran Foer
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsThe collected fiction of "one of the most original imaginations in modern Europe" (Cynthia Ozick) Bruno Schulz's untimely death at the hands of a Nazi stands as one of the great losses to modern literature. During his lifetime, his work found little critical regard, but word of his remarkable talents gradually won him an international readership... -
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Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA young woman must shake off a family curse and the widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin in this wickedly funny, brilliantly perceptive novel about love, female rivalry, and superstition from the author of the smash hit My Sister, the Serial Killer (“A bombshell of a book..Categorized as:
literary-fiction magical-realism low-fantasy fiction contemporary fantasy mystery horror -
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 11 ratingsIn the twelve unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible, Kafkaesque nightmare...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism adult anthologies audiobook contemporary dystopia -
Outside the Dog Museum by Jonathan Carroll
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsHarry Radcliffe is a brilliant prize-winning architect---witty and remarkable. He's also a self-serving opportunist, ready to take advantage of whatever situations, and women, come his way. But now, newly divorced and having had an inexplicable nervous breakdown, Harry is being wooed by the extremely wealthy Sultan of Saru to design a billion-dollar dog museum... -
Man V. Nature by Diane Cook
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA refreshingly imaginative, daring debut collection of stories which illuminates with audacious wit the complexity of human behavior, as seen through the lens of the natural worldTold with perfect rhythm and unyielding brutality, these stories expose unsuspecting men and women to the realities of nature, the primal instincts of man, and the dark humor and heartbreak of our struggle to not only...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 21st-century adult anthologies contemporary dark -
A Child Across the Sky by Jonathan Carroll
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsLibrarian's Note: this is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 071263441X / 9780712634410.Just as the the word "weird" has many implications and shades of meaning, so too does the latest--weird--work by this gifted and perplexing writer. As Carroll ( Bones of the Moon ; Sleeping in Flame ) himself says, "Life has a habit of turning dark corners... -
Smoking Poppy by Graham Joyce
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsGraham Joyce travels to an enthralling, suspense-charged landscape in this hallucinatory novel of a father's quest to save his daughter -- without destroying himself. Dan Innes has received shattering news from the British Embassy in Bangkok: his daughter, Charlie, whom he hasn't seen or spoken to in two years, has been imprisoned in a Thai jail for drug smuggling...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism action-adventure adult book contemporary dark -
Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories by Elizabeth Hand
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWidely praised and widely read, Elizabeth Hand is regarded as one of America's leading literary fantasists. This new collection (an expansion of the limited-release Bibliomancy, which won the World Fantasy Award in 2005) showcases a wildly inventive author at the height of her powers... -
Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days by Jeanette Winterson
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsFrom the New York Times bestselling author of "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?" comes an enchanting collection of stories for the holiday season.For years Jeanette Winterson has loved writing a new story at Christmas time and here she brings together twelve of her brilliantly imaginative, funny and bold tales...Categorized as:
gothic literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 21st-century adult anthologies audiobook -
The Panic Hand: Stories by Jonathan Carroll
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsCompared frequently to Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carroll is, in the worlds of Pat Conroy, an absolute original. The Panic Hand assembles in one volume the shorter works of this master, including the World Fantasy Award-winning tale Friend's Best Man and the short novels Uh-Oh and Black Cocktail... -
Le Visage vert by Gustav Meyrink
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA stranger enters a magician's shop. Inside, among several strange customers, he sees an old man, who makes him sick with horror. The rest of the novel chronicles his quest for the elusive and horrible old man... -
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The Woman Who Married a Cloud by Jonathan Carroll
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThirty-eight extraordinary stories from award-winning author Jonathan CarrollFor more than thirty years, Jonathan Carroll’s writing has defied genre conventions. Known for his novels—including The Land of Laughs, Bones of the Moon, Sleeping in Flame,and many other compelling and often surreal stories—Carroll has also created an eloquent body of short fiction...Categorized as:
low-fantasy magical-realism adult anthologies contemporary fiction horror supernatural -
The Happy Man: A Tale of Horror by Eric C. Higgs
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsCharles Ripley has a good job as an engineer, a pretty wife, and an expensive house in a fashionable San Diego suburb. But it isn't until Ruskin Marsh moves in next door that Ripley realizes how passionless his life really is... -
Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey, محمد غفوری
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsOnce the Orme family’s magnificent ancestral estate, Observatory Mansions is now a crumbling apartment complex, home to an eccentric group of misfits. One of them is Francis Orme, who earns his livelihood as a living statue. When not practicing “inner and outer stillness,” Francis steals the cherished possessions of others to add to his private museum... -
Swansong by Kerry Andrew
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIn this stunningly assured, immersive and vividly atmospheric first novel, a young woman comes face-to-face with the volatile, haunted wilderness of the Scottish Highlands.Polly Vaughan is trying to escape the ravaging guilt of a disturbing incident in London by heading north to the Scottish Highlands...Categorized as:
gothic literary-fiction magical-realism adult book contemporary female-author female-mc -
Last Summer at Mars Hill by Elizabeth Hand
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThis is Elizabeth Hand's long-awaited collection of short stories, centered around her Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning novella The Last Summer at Mars Hill. There are 12 pieces in all here, ranging from those first published in places like Interzone and Pulphouse to a two-page poem taken from the pages of Asimov's... -
The Gravedigger by Peter Grandbois
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIn a small, whitewashed village, indistinguishable from any other in Andalusia, Juan Rodrigo is a gravedigger. The job was handed down to him by his father, as was the ability to hear the voices of the dead and to tell their stories to the living...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism book coming-of-age contemporary death family
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